ZAP! BANG!

Fizzle.

'Daredevil' starts fast, but our hero lacks marvel

"DAREDEVIL" (star)(star)

February 14, 2003|By Michael Wilmington, Tribune movie critic.

"Daredevil"--which stars Ben Affleck as yet another Marvel Comics hero--is a blockbuster wannabe that seems to touch all bases: zapping us in scene after scene with charismatic stars, ultra-glitzy production, heart-pumping rock music and lots of rock-'em-sock-'em action. But "Daredevil" lacks the spectacle and sense of fun and dynamism of a movie like "Spider-Man"-- even though that's what its makers obviously want it to be and even though its hero, in many ways, is just as interesting and vulnerably human a creation.

That hero is a blind Hell's Kitchen lawyer named Matt Murdock, who defends the underprivileged by day and soars by night as the masked, red-suited crime-fighter Daredevil. Affleck plays Murdock/Daredevil and, unlike Tobey Maguire in "Spider-Man" or Michael Keaton in 1989's "Batman," Affleck looks more like a hero when he's out of his costume than he does wearing it.

As lawyer Matt, Affleck is breezy and sexy, a big, self-confident and irreverent guy who flirts with beautiful women and puts down pompous snobs and villains. As Daredevil, a tortured hero in a tight red rubbery-looking outfit, he seems a bit thick and lumbering. And so does the movie.

"Daredevil" starts off fast and snappy, like another hip spectacular comic book epic, but it lacks the storytelling verve of the better super-hero movies like Tim Burton's "Batman" and Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man." Those pictures played with our sense of wonder or nostalgia--and so in a way, did that other recent Marvel Comics movie "X-Men." They were fun to watch because of the loving way they elaborated the old pop myths of the super-hero crime fighters and their bizarre origins and peculiar lives.

But though it tries hard, there's something ugly and chaotic about "Daredevil." The pace of the dialogue is too slow and over-emphatic, and many of the scenes have a perfunctory feel, like comic-book panels redrawn too many times.

Maybe devotion to a comic book hero isn't enough. Johnson immerses us in the Daredevil fantasy world (one curiously reminiscent here of "Gangs of New York"). We first see Matt as a Hell's Kitchen kid (Scott Terra), stung into a life of vengeance by the murder of his dad, Jack, an aging boxer on the comeback trail who defies the Mob's demand that he throw a crucial fight. When Jack is killed, young Matt--blinded earlier in an accident--swears to avenge him.

Devoting himself to intense physical and mental regimen, Matt grows up into a socially conscious lawyer and masked crime fighter--all the while seeking his dad's killers. Eventually, he joins forces with Elektra, a martial artist powerhouse whose father (Erick Avari) is another murder victim, but who wrongly believes Daredevil was responsible.

It's a typical Daredevil story, the kind that original writer Lee or '70s-'80s writer-artist Frank Miller could have knocked off superbly in a couple issues. That's the problem: a movie needs more. Most of the comic-book myths and heroes invented by Lee in the 1960s had a solidity, depth and even a literary quality other comic heroes and worlds lacked--which is why we liked them.

"Daredevil" is supposed to be darker and more intense than the other Marvel movies, and Daredevil himself more fallible. He's a mortal, like Batman, and though his other senses have developed to compensate for his blindness--and though he's also a crack martial artist--he has no mutant or alien superpowers. After every fight he has to feed himself pain-killers to recuperate. That mortality should make the story more interesting, but the movie still seems strained--as uncomfortable in its own superhero suit as Affleck often is.

Daredevil's blindness makes him an unusual hero and the movie has a clever way of showing us the effects of the super-sensory skills he's developed as compensation: the way he "sees" through ultra-sensitive senses of hearing and touch. And it shows us how Daredevil is ambivalently received by the public and the media, with determined New York Post reporter Ben Urich (Joe Pantoliano) dogging his tracks.

But, despite all that, the movie is loud, clanging and unimaginative. Johnson is best known for his scripts for the "Grumpy Old Men" comedies and for the glossy, somewhat sappy "Simon Birch"--three shallow, likable films. Despite his highly charismatic cast, this one is even shallower.